Roman Frister

Roman Frister was born in 1928 in Bielsko

Frister was born in 1928 in Bielsko, Poland, the only child of a well-off family. During World War II the family escaped the ghetto by posing as Christians and moved to Krakow. In 1943 they were exposed as Jews after an informer reported them.

His mother was murdered in front of him in the Krakow prison. He and his father were sent to the Starachowice labor camp, where his father died of typhus. He was later held in Auschwitz and Mauthausen and survived the war.

After the war he returned to Poland and worked as a journalist. In 1957 he moved to Israel, studied Hebrew and joined the newspaper Al HaMishmar. He moved to Haaretz in 1965 and edited its weekend supplement until 1983.

From 1991 to 2007 he ran the Koteret school of journalism, which came under Tel Aviv University in 2006. He wrote books in Hebrew and Polish, and a play based on his book The Stolen Identity was staged at the Cameri Theater in 1987.

In his last years he lived in Warsaw and reported for Haaretz from Poland. He died in Poland in 2015.